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by Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Mark Kimsey
February 7, 8 & 9, 2001

Neville

Malcolm Bentote

Belinda, his wife

Valerie Clarke

Phyllis, his sister

Dorothy Bentote

Harvey, his uncle

Tag
Bernard, Phyllis's husband Graeme Gibaut
Rachel, Belinda's sister Estelle Dunham

Eddie

Mark Brown

Pattie, Eddie's wife

Sue Worker

Clive

David Bowers

Programme Notes        [ Photographs ]

Alan Ayckbourn, was born in London in 1939. The son of an absentee musician and an author of short stories, Ayckbourn wrote his first play, "a rip-off of Jennings", at prep school when he was about ten. He left Haileybury at seventeen to go straight into the theatre ("university seemed an obstruction") and was given an introduction to Sir Donald Wolfit by his French master. He joined the legendary actor-manager as an assistant stage-manager: "He was a giant figure. Not a man to offend; if you mis-set props, he could take your eyebrows off." At 19 he was married and at 20 father of the first of two sons.

Before long Ayckbourn was acting under the director Stephen Joseph at Scarborough, and has never wavered in his devotion to in-the-round staging since that time. In 1959 he played Stanley in the second production of Pinter's The Birthday Party after its London débâcle. Pinter directed. "We all thought it was completely mad, new and weird, but his passion and certainty drove us through, and when it opened it was electrifying. I've been very influenced by Pinter, his patterns of repeated words, missing words. Often there's a sort of blandness on the page which conceals a tension when it's acted."

He has worked in theatre all his life and in all aspects of it; stage manager, sound technician, lighting technician, scene painter, prop maker, actor, writer and director. Most of these talents he developed (or abandoned) thanks to his mentor and founder of the Theatre in Scarborough, Stephen Joseph, who first encouraged him to write. Almost all of the plays Alan Ayckbourn has written to date received their first performance at this theatre. More than 25 have subsequently been produced in the West End, at the Royal National Theatre or the RSC since his first hit, Relatively Speaking, opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1967.

Major successes include Absurd Person Singular, The Norman Conquests, Bedroom Farce, Just Between Ourselves, A Chorus Of Disapproval, Woman In Mind, A Small Family Business and Man Of The Moment. His plays have won numerous awards - including seven London Evening Standard Awards. They have been translated into over 30 languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. They have also been filmed in French and English. Four of his plays have been seen on Broadway attracting two Tony nominations. In 1991, he received a Dramalogue Critics Award for his play Henceforward…. His plays now feature on school curricula for study and examination.

He is an enthusiastic writer for children and Faber, in their Contemporary Classics series, recently published a volume of five of these plays, amongst them the award winning Mr. A's Amazing Maze Plays and Invisible Friends, both staged at the Royal National Theatre. His latest, The Boy Who Fell Into A Book, was the 1998 Christmas production at the Stephen Joseph Theatre while Gizmo was his contribution to the 1999 BT National Connections project organised by the Royal National Theatre involving young people nationwide.

Alan Ayckbourn is also an established director, not only of his own work (since 1978, he has directed all of his London productions) but other people's. In 1986, at Sir Peter Hall's invitation, he directed his own company of actors in four plays at the Royal National Theatre winning a Plays & Plays Director of the Year Award for his production of A View From The Bridge starring Michael Gambon. In 1995, his production of Herb Gardner's Conversations With My Father, starring Judd Hirsch transferred from Scarborough to London's Old Vic Theatre.

He has been the Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University and is a Fellow of the RSA. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Keele, Hull, Leeds, Bradford, York and the Open University and is an Honorary Fellow of Bretton Hall and Cardiff University of Wales. Other accolades include a Montblanc de la Culture Award for Europe for 'establishing a thriving theatrical tradition in Scarborough and for his dedication and commitment to it' and a Writers' Guild of Great Britain Lifetime Achievement Award. He was appointed a CBE in 1987 and in 1997 became the first playwright to be knighted since Terence Rattigan.

Alan Ayckbourn would perhaps regard his greatest achievement to be the establishment of a permanent home for the company of which he has been Artistic Director since 1971 - the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Six years of fundraising and hard work culminated in the opening on 30th April 1996 of a splendid two-auditoria arts complex. Fashioned from a former Odeon cinema, it stands in the centre of Scarborough and is the realisation of a 40-year dream.

As the world's most frequently performed playwright after Shakespeare, he received a knighthood in 1997. Ayckbourn's life seems to have achieved an enviable rhythm, going, with a few exceptions, from success to success each year, during which a month is set aside for writing, although a play is often completed in under three weeks.